


Pulled in a New Direction

by one_more_offbeat_anthem



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Force Bond (Star Wars), The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:20:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25738711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/one_more_offbeat_anthem/pseuds/one_more_offbeat_anthem
Summary: So I thought about this every time I’ve seen TLJ, and then when the TROS came out and Kylo pulls off Rey’s necklace while she’s on Pasaana…I think this idea I had was totally doable. What if, in TLJ, when Rey and Kylo touch hands, instead of Luke coming in and yelling “No!”….what if this happened instead? What if Kylo Ren was pulled in a new direction—literally?Features some talk about the “New Vader” theory, force ghosts, and Snoke being a creeper. And also a little light Reylo because duh.
Relationships: Rey & Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	Pulled in a New Direction

“You’re not alone.”

“Neither are you.”

Their fingers touched, and then, suddenly, before Ben could let go of her finger, she grasped his hand fully and yanked on his arm as hard as she could. She had miscalculated the force needed to pull him towards her, though, and so he fell on top of her, pushing her off of her stone seat, until they were both sprawled on the ground.

“What—where am I?” He tried to sit up, and then looked at her accusingly, “Rey, what have you done?!”

“Brought you to Ahch—“ she put her hand on her mouth to stop herself, “I won’t tell you. I don’t want you finding a way to contact the First Order, telling them where Luke is.”

“How’d you get here?”

“The Falcon.”

“Then,” he stood up, “I’ll just leave on it.”

“Ben, no.” Rey stood up in turn. She couldn’t match Ben’s height, but she could outweigh him in ferocity, “If you try to get on the Falcon…I’ll tell Chewie to tie you up into little knots. And he will.”

“C-chewie’s with you?”

“Of course he is. I think he comes with the Falcon, whether you like it or not. No, I had a better idea.”

“Besides making it seem to the First Order like I literally vanished into thin air?”

“You _wish_ you had thought to drag me onto your cruiser before I thought of pulling you here.”

The expression on his face confirmed that she was right in saying that.

“So….what are you going to do now?” He asked her.

“I’m gonna take you to Luke, but you gotta change. Lose the cape and that ridiculous sweater-thing.”

“Why should I listen to you?”

She noted his lightsaber hanging off his belt, “Because you want to. And you want to come with me to see Luke and start training.”

“ _Start training_? I’m a Sith lord!”

Rey laughed, and Ben was startled. She controlled herself, “If you’re a Sith lord, I’m a Wookie. A real Sith lord would have already struck me down with that lightsaber you’ve got there.”

He looked at it as if seeing it for the first time, “Huh. Right.”

“A real Sith lord would have killed me as soon as he met me. But you didn’t. So. Lose the cape, and let’s go say hi to your uncle.”

Ben obliged, although he grimaced slightly. The night glimmered around them as they walked to Luke’s hut. She could see Ben taking in his surroundings, listening to the rustling waves as they smashed up against the sides of the island’s cliffs. She pounded on the door, “Luke? I have…something to show you.”

The door swung open, and Luke said, “Rey, it’s late. What could—“ he caught sight of Ben, “Why hello there, Ben Solo. Nice of you to show up.”

“Uncle,” Ben said awkwardly, inclining his head.

Luke returned his gaze to Rey, “Okay, why is he here? Better yet, how is he here?”

“You’re going to hate this….” She started, “But the Force has been connecting Ben and I. And we could talk to each other….so I had the idea to just…yank him here. And now he can’t leave, because even if the Force connects us again….we’re in the same place. And I’m sure Chewie would be delighted to strangle him if he goes anywhere near the Falcon.”

Luke thought for a moment, and then grinned, “Well, it looks like Snoke and the First Order will just have to fend for themselves, huh? In the morning, I’ll start training both of you. Although I’m gonna need that—“ he stretched out his hand and Ben’s saber zoomed into it, “—so that you don’t do any more damage. You can train with a stick or something at first. I don’t trust you with a saber.”

“Why not?” Ben asked, his voice indignant.

Luke sobered up, “Unless you’ve forgotten, you killed my brother-in-law. And you _just_ got here. You may look less like Kylo and more like Ben, but you need to get his energy out of your soul….You can sleep in Rey’s hut, so she can keep an eye on you.”

“Goodnight, Master,” Rey said. Luke mockingly saluted her and turned back into his hut, slamming the door.

“Well,” she said, “That went better than expected.”

“What do you mean?” Ben asked.

“When I first got here and tried to convince him to train me, I had to follow him around for ages—be persistent, until he got tired of me. You show up, and—“

“I think,” Ben said gently, “That the fact that you wore him down made him more okay with seeing me. He knew that you were persistent and had light in you. And…..I haven’t killed you yet, which must mean something.”

“You’ll never get the chance to kill me,” she said, “You can use your cloak and stuff as bedding.” She pushed open the door to her hut and curled up by the fire with her blanket, “Don’t try anything stupid.”

“No promises.”

*****

When the morning dawned, Ben awoke to Rey and Luke standing over him.

Ben scrambled up, his hair everywhere, “Good morning. Sorry.”

“We’ve got a lot to do today,” Luke said, “No dawdling.”

All morning, he put Rey and Ben through their paces—Rey with her (well, Luke’s….well, really Anakin’s) lightsaber, Ben with Rey’s staff, which she had let him borrow under the condition that he didn’t damage it. When it was time to eat something, Luke disappeared, leaving Ben and Rey alone on the cliff.

“I don’t suppose he’ll let us spar, will he?” Ben asked.

“Not with lightsabers, no. I assume he’s still got his somewhere. He still doesn’t trust you.”

“…Do you trust me?” His voice was small.

Rey sighed, “I trust you enough to bring you here. And I hope that in time others trust you, too. But you’ve got a lot of atonement to make—and there’s always the chance that none of this will stick…that you’ll just go back to the First Order.”

“You really think that would happen? I haven’t tried to escape yet.”

“It’s been one day, Ben.”

Slowly, the days passed. One, then, two, then three, until suddenly it had been a week. It was odd for Ben—he was cut off from the outside world, with no way of knowing if anyone’d wondered where he’d gone.

Except for Snoke.

Even from far away, he could feel the Supreme Leader trying to probe him, to feed into his dreams and nightmares. Ben spent most of the nights awake, trying to be quiet and ignore the pounding headache these force-dreams—force-nightmares—brought on, headaches he had been getting for years.

On the seventh day, Luke declared their training would be no training. When Ben awoke, Rey was gone, her blanket neatly folded and placed on the stone seat. Quietly, he left the hut. The island, which he still didn’t know the name of, was calm except for the perpetual thrashing of the waves.

He walked down the path to the clearing on the cliff face where they had been training, and then noticed another path, a narrower one. He followed it until he arrived at a massive tree that seemed to have an entrance carved into it. He stood outside, peering in hesitantly.

“I see you’ve found the original Jedi texts,” a voice said from behind him. Ben turned to see his uncle sitting on a rock.

“Uncle Luke, sorry, I didn’t…”

“Didn’t see me? Come sit down.”

Ben obliged, sitting cross-legged on the rock next to him.

“Ben, I owe you an apology. I should have never doubted you…I made you what you are.”

“No,” Ben swallowed, “I made myself what I am. I listened to all the voices telling me I wasn’t good enough.”

“Is that what you’re afraid of?”

He nodded slowly, “Snoke promised me he would make me powerful.”

“But you wanted more, didn’t you? Or something else?” Luke’s eyes shone as they met his nephew’s, “The power he could give you would never be enough—because it would always come at a price: to do his bidding. That’s the same thing my father, your grandfather, learned. He could follow Palpatine, but at the end of it all, Palpatine’s promises were all lies, and they resulted in him losing my mother, Leia, and I. It was only at the very end that he chose to overpower Palpatine and take the risk to save the Rebellion, even if it resulted in his death….you see, a Jedi’s path must involve confronting fear. You know what you are afraid of—you will have to confront it.”

“A Jedi’s path?”

“You think you’re the only one Rey’s talked to? I see now what she saw before—the struggle between light and dark. I believe she’s mentioned to you that you’re not a real Sith—she’s right. A real Sith would have desecrated this place, destroyed those texts—“ he pointed at the tree, “—and left us for dead. Or killed us. But instead….you’ve got light in you, and you come from a line of Jedi. Before he was Darth Vader, your grandfather was Anakin Skywalker, Jedi. And he died a Jedi, too.”

“I’ve always been so afraid of disappointing him,” Ben said, “I felt like—I was supposed to be the new Vader, a better one.”

“And you can be—but not by being a stronger leader. The path of the Sith and hate eventually lead to great destruction. He made the decision to return to the light at the end of his life—too late to retrieve what he had lost or live to see his sacrifice come into fruition. But you? You could return to the light now, and preserve so much of yourself and of this Resistance.”

“I could?”

“Of course you could.” Luke smiled at him, “And I think my father would be quiet pleased to know that one of the main things compelling you to the light was a girl.”

“I-I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ben stammered.

“Sure you don’t. Here’s a fact that might delight you—my father secretly married my mother and fathered children, going against the Jedi codes. He was not exactly a rule follower—had he and your father met in, well, friendlier circumstances, when he was still Anakin, they would have been best friends.”

“How do you know this stuff?” Ben asked.

“Oh, my father comes to talk to me as a force ghost sometimes. So do my old masters, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. I think my father is making up for lost time.” Luke smiled wistfully, “He hasn’t come to see me much since I came here….I don’t think he’s proud of me for running away. It’s not what he would have done.” Luke looked down, “But I failed you. I failed everyone.”

“I don’t think so,” Ben said, “I—I’ll think about what you said.”

“About Rey?”

“No! I mean, no. About the other stuff. I don’t recollect you saying anything about her.”

“Keep telling yourself that.” And with that, his uncle left.

Ben continued walking, past the tree, down into the heart of the island. Rey had told him about the pool, the place of great darkness….he was curious to see it, to go there and see what he could see. He was turning his uncle’s words over in his mind as he went.

He noticed that the air grew colder around him, and that the ground was slicker on his bare feet—he had ditched his shoes a few days ago, enjoying the unfamiliar feeling of grass under his feet. Now, though, something felt wrong. He could see a wide circle in the ground below him, covered with creeping black…were they vines? He couldn’t tell. But it was clearly the pool Rey had told him about. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go in anymore.

All of a sudden, he felt like his skull was being pressed in from all sides. A voice boomed in his skull, a voice he knew to be Snoke’s.

 _They want nothing with you_ , it said, _they are trying to deceive you—they will abandon you. Only I will take care of you. Bring me the girl and I will have no more anger._

“No!” He shouted, feeling himself collapse. He was fighting against an invisible power—there was nothing there.

 _They don’t want you_ , the voice said again.

Unable to block it out, he curled up on the ground as Snoke’s voice repeated the same message, over and over and over and over….

“Ben! Ben, can you hear me?” Rey’s voice seemed to come from far away. Ben felt a hand on his shoulder, and when he looked up, her face swam in front of him. She was kneeling over him, and he realized with a jolt of embarrassment that there were tears running down his face.

“I’m—I’m alright,” he said, sitting up awkwardly, “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.” She looked concerned, her eyebrows slanted back as she gazed at him, “What happened?”

“I heard….I heard Snoke’s voice…..taunting me.”

“Does that happen a lot?”

He looked down at his hands, “All-all the time.”

“ _All the time_?!” She said in disbelief.

“I have nightmares…can’t sleep much. S’been happening since…since before I left my uncle’s training originally.”

“And you haven’t told anyone?”

He looked up at her, “Too scared. And he seemed to be telling the truth…” Ben took a deep, shuddering breath, “That I would never be strong enough, or powerful, or like…” he rubbed his eyes, “Like Vader. But I think I’ve gotten it all wrong.” He felt a tear leak out of his eye again, and his cheeks reddened.

“It’s okay,” Rey said kindly, her voice without a trace of sarcasm or malice, “You’re with us now.” And then, she wrapped her arms around him, pulling him into a tight hug. “You’re with us now,” she said again, into his shoulder.

Ben hugged her back, and though to himself that maybe—although he would never admit it—his uncle had known a thing or two about his struggle between the light and the dark…..and the reasons for it.


End file.
